What's the Big Deal with Latin?

My mother gave me a book of beginning Christian Latin to study in 7th grade. I loved languages, and she felt that knowledge of basic Latin would help me understand the roots, meanings and forms of words in English. She was right; I gained a greater understanding of English (and, coincidentally, Spanish) through studying Latin vocab and grammar than I ever could have from English spelling and grammar workbooks.

But something else happened that my mother did not expect.

In studying Latin for its application to English, I came to enjoy the Lingua Latina for its own sake. It is precise, concise, and transcendent of place and time--basically everything a body could ask for in a spoken and written language. I liked it so much that I started learning songs and chants in Latin, and even occasionally attending the Latin Mass. And then, when my Best Beloved and I were planning our wedding Mass and including a lot of Latin in it, my mother started to protest. 

"Nobody will understand it! Nobody will get anything out of it. It's basically useless. It's a dead language. What's the big deal about Latin, anyway?"

But looking at history, it's fairly obvious that Latin is a pretty big deal. In the way that everyone learns English now for political, social and economic reasons, once upon a time, every educated person learned to read, write and speak Latin. Latin was the language of communication between different cultures of the Western World for several hundred years. Even after the Roman Empire died out, it was still used as the universal language of the Catholic Church, and continues in that capacity to this day. Why is that?

Let us lay aside the political reasons of Rome having expanded its empire over almost the entire Western world; after all, if the Church found that Latin was not well suited to its purposes, she could very easily have thrown it off when the Empire collapsed. I don't believe that she held onto it out of fear of change either, for the Church is not marked by fear, but by boldness. There must have been something about Latin that made it worth keeping around, even after being called by most of the world a "dead language."

 Unlike English, Latin is incredibly precise. English was once a Germanic language, which was over the centuries merged and mixed up with Norse, Celtic, Latin and French, and is in a constant state of flux and evolution. It is in constant, everyday use by people who have grown increasingly lazy, and (probably as a result) is slowly becoming less exact, less descriptive, and more confusing. Latin, however, grew to maturity as the language of a dominant world power--it did not bow to other languages, and did not need to alter itself significantly to accommodate them. It remained pretty much the same from the days of St. Jerome (who compiled the Latin Vulgate) until now. The grammar, spelling and pronunciation are very mathematical, with few (if any) exceptions. If you want the words to say exactly what you mean, and as efficiently as possible, use Latin. The Church, in her wisdom, has done for centuries. 

Latin is also concise. When I was studying Latin, I marveled at how much less space on the page the Latin phrase took than the English translation beneath it. Relying on context and subtle changes in the endings of words, the Latin language found that it did not need most of the little connector words that we necessarily have to use in English--words like "the" and "a" and "of." This is how the Latin versions of some of my favorite hymns pack way more meaning into the same number of syllables than their English counterparts. And as a side benefit, if you happen to be crunched for time, Latin prayers are faster to say. (Though I don't recommend speed-prayer as a rule, unless perhaps you are being chased by lions...)

And it is a transcendent language. Latin may be a "dead" language today, in the sense that no one would use it conversationally, but I think its very deadness gives it attributes that no other language has. It it no longer the language of any one culture or country, yet the whole world still feels its influence, and uses it to connect to the great intellects and wisdom of our past. Thus it transcends place. 

Since Latin is not regularly spoken anymore, it is no longer in a state of flux, ever-changing and evolving, like English, Spanish, or any other language commonly spoken today. Yet it has been used through the years, primarily by the Catholic Church, to an extent far greater than any other dead language in the world's history. I think this is because, throughout the last two-thousand or so years, Latin has liked us to Christ in ways that even more obvious languages, like Hebrew and Aramaic have not. Whenever we pray a prayer or sing a song in Latin, it is like praying or singing alongside all the Christians throughout time who used this same language to worship Christ, transcending the boundaries of time.     

Unfortunately, I had no luck communicating this to my mother. She still professes not to see the point of Latin, but my Best Beloved and I did not give in, and she was forced to sit through an hour-and-a-quarter Mass which, although mostly in English, was sprinkled generously with gems from the past in the language of our spiritual forefathers. Maybe when she gets to Heaven she'll figure it out.